I watched Jackie Chan’s Little Big Soldier at the Chalerm P. Theatre in Pak Chong, which at the time was the oldest active theatre in Thailand outside Bangkok (it was built in 1957). The auditorium smelled strongly of mildew, and I remember thinking that the lacklustre film definitely wasn’t worth potentially contracting a respiratory illness.

I watched another Jackie Chan movie, The Shinjuku Incident, at the EM Cineplex, in Nong Khai’s Beung Kan district, before it became Thailand’s seventy-seventh and newest province. It was a screening for one in a theatre that probably sat 400 and had no air conditioning. The usher pointed a noisy industrial fan directly at me that overpowered the audio of the film. I sweated through my shirt anyway.

• Tags: Issue 26, Philip Jablon, Thailand